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Making Reservations for Leftovers

Carol Savvas gives a dish she made to a messenger as part of a co-op through which members share portions of their meals.Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

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Ms. Savvas packing some of her spinach pies that were to be enjoyed later by someone she had never met. Credit Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

On a recent evening, Carol Savvas made dinner in her TriBeCa home. She minced organic spinach, scallions and parsley. She cracked open “certified humane” eggs and mixed them with crumbled feta cheese from a farmers’ market. Spooning large dollops onto phyllo dough, she meticulously folded them into triangles.

Once her spinach pies came out of the oven, she put some aside for herself. The others she placed into two insulated bags with reheating instructions. Minutes later her buzzer rang and a bike messenger took the pouches, setting off for another household in New York City. Ms. Savvas had no idea who would soon be noshing on her cooking.

Both households, though — the giver and the receiver — are members of Mealku, a new food-sharing cooperative. The co-op could be described as potluck meets carryout for people with high culinary standards and adventurous taste buds.

Started in July, Mealku has already attracted more than 700 members. “What was appealing,” Ms. Savvas said, “was this community of like-minded people who care about food and sharing.”

She was also eager to receive a piece of chocolate walnut rice cake that she had ordered for the second time through the co-op’s online reservations system. “I can’t wait,” she said.

Getting people to eat better was just part of the motivation for creating Mealku, said its founder, Ted D’Cruz-Young, who is also the owner of Ideocracy, a marketing agency based in New York. “It grew out of frustration,” he said. “We waste too much.”

He describes how Mealku acts as the middle man, facilitating the mechanics of food swapping and vetting potential members.

“No lazy, crazy or selfish people are allowed,” Mealku states on its Web site. Inspectors are sent to potential members’ homes to scrutinize kitchen hygiene and assess cooking standards. They look in refrigerators and check for expiration dates. They try to ensure that members are joining for the right reasons. “The young wonderful woman who came here,” Ms. Savvas said, “spent two hours with us.”

The online reservation system allows members to post portions of meals that they will be cooking within three days. Other members sign up to receive them no more than 40 minutes after the food is ready. After Hurricane Sandy, the co-op provided thousands of homemade meals to people in need.

Mealku announced recently that it was partnering with Stonehenge, which leases luxury rentals in more than 20 apartment buildings in New York City.

No money is exchanged. Mealku uses a point system with members earning points when they post a food portion and when someone reserves it. Points are deducted when they order a portion.

Membership is free, but eventually Mealku plans to start charging a monthly fee plus a delivery charge to pay for bike messengers, recyclable food bags and other things.

Mealku requires members to sign an agreement to ensure certain standards. But it operates largely on trust. An official with the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in an e-mail that “clubs (including meal swaps or co-ops) where a group of people prepare meals for each other are not regulated by the health code.”

While that might worry some, “going to a restaurant is more of a roulette wheel,” said Sokie Lee, who joined in July after participating in a potluck picnic in Prospect Park sponsored by Mealku.

“I was instantly sold,” said Ms. Lee, who lives in Murray Hill. “The quality of the food was exactly what I wanted.” Besides, she added: “I love to cook. So it was no big deal for me to cook and share.”

A snafu did occur the first time she posted a portion from one of her home-cooked Asian-fusion meals. It was ordered by someone in Texas. “A slight software glitch,” Ms. Lee said. Since then, she has attracted at least a dozen takers in the city for culinary treats like her “Tales From the Dark Side Chicken,” which she described as a slow-cooked dark meat chicken dish “with truckloads of onions, garlic and ginger.”

Over 1,000 dishes have been posted since July, including slices of apple cake submitted by a woman who identified herself on the Web site as Rachael, the chef and owner behind a local sustainable food stock company. She said that she “had a bevy of Cameo apples and a hankering for this cake.” Participants include some sort of narrative of their dishes and descriptions of themselves.

Mr. D’Cruz-Young is seeing if schools might be interested in becoming part of Mealku. Leslie Li, the executive chef at the Rudolf Steiner School, on the Upper East Side, which provides organic food for its students, said she might post surplus meals from school lunches. She said she would also consider joining herself.

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